Marketing technologies in tourism. Research of marketing technologies in tourism The concept and role of marketing in tourism

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Introduction

The most important activity of companies operating in the tourism sector is the promotion of tourism products to the market, advertising and sale of prepared tour packages. Currently, the media, special publications, and advertising brochures are literally overflowing with a variety of tourist offers, and the path of a travel agency to success is to convey relevant information to the potential client and provoke his response. This task is feasible if the company's management has knowledge in the field of marketing or the company has a marketing and advertising department.

For decades, under the Soviet system, there was a centralized vertical system of tourism management, in which there was a centralized economic policy that supported the financing of targeted activities to promote, first of all, ideology and secondarily the actual tourism resources and services. With the advent of perestroika and further reformation of business principles, tourism moved into the sphere of entrepreneurship, and now entrepreneurs must spend their own money to solve their problems.

Advertising, as the main means of promoting tourism products, is expensive and not always effective. The use of marketing technologies will make it possible to rationally use the resources of a travel agency, including money, for the promotion and implementation of tours and will help in choosing the most effective methods of promotion for each tourism product.

The purpose of the study is the process of considering marketing in service and tourism in the market of the Kursk region. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were solved:

The theoretical foundations of marketing activities in service and tourism have been studied;

The marketing activities of Otdykh v Crimea LLC, located in the tourism market of the Kursk region, are analyzed;

Develop proposals for improving marketing activities at Otdykh v Crimea LLC.

The object of the study is the tourism and service sector of OOO “Rest in Crimea” in the Kursk region.

The subject of the research is the study of marketing in service and tourism on the basis of the enterprise LLC "Rest in Crimea".

1 Theoretical foundations of marketing activities in service and tourism

1.1 Features of economic activity in service and tourism

The tourism business is one of the fastest growing sectors of the world economy. International tourism is one of the three largest export industries, behind oil and automobile manufacturing. The importance of tourism in the world is constantly increasing, which is associated with the increased influence of tourism on the economy of an individual country.

The tourism business is attractive to entrepreneurs for the following reasons:

Small start-up investment;

Growing demand for tourism services;

High level of profitability; - minimum payback period.

According to Yu. M. Chebotar, the effectiveness of tourism consists of the following functions:

1) Tourism is a source of foreign exchange earnings and a means of providing employment to the population;

2) Tourism develops industries serving the tourism sector: construction, trade, production of consumer goods, communications.

3) Tourism expands its contributions to the country's balance of payments.

It is advisable to classify tourism according to geography, purpose of travel, method of transportation, means of accommodating tourists, etc.

The main types of tourism are the following:

1) Domestic tourism. Domestic tourism does not involve crossing the state border. It accounts for 80-90% of trips in the world.

2) International tourism. On average, about 65% of all international tourist trips occur in Europe, about 20% in America and about 15% in other regions. The development of international tourism in countries predominantly receiving tourists is driven by the desire to increase the influx of foreign currency and create new jobs. Many countries are trying to solve balance of payments problems through international tourism. Arriving foreign tourists, paying for goods and services, ensure the flow of currency into the budget of the host country and thereby activate its balance of payments. The entry of tourists is accompanied by an outflow of national currency. International payments for tourism operations of this kind are recorded in the liability side of the country's balance of payments.

3) Recreational tourism. Tourism for recreational purposes is the most widespread form for a number of countries. Trips of foreign tourists to Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland pursue, first of all, precisely this goal. Recreational tourism is characterized by the duration of the trip, a small number of cities included in the route, and the widespread use of air transport. Trips for recreational purposes are very diverse and can include entertainment programs (theater, cinema, festivals, etc.), hobby activities (hunting, fishing, music, art, ethnic hikes related to the study of the national culture of the country stay, etc.)

4) Health tourism. This type of tourism is of a purely personal, individual nature. The usual duration of a treatment tour is 24-28 days, which is significantly longer than other types of tourism. Wellness recreation, depending on the means of influence on the human body, is divided into climatic, balneo, sea, mud therapy, etc.

5) Educational tourism. This type of tourism includes travel and trips for educational purposes. An excursion as a form of knowledge and a form of leisure serves the function of broadening one’s horizons. One of the types of educational trips is car tourism. Compared to traveling by other types of vehicles, traveling by car and bus provides tourists with a much greater educational opportunity.

6) Professional and business tourism. This type of tourism includes trips for business purposes. Life in a modern civilized society necessitates international contacts. Travel by representatives of business circles has recently become widespread.

7) Shopping tours. This type of tourism is typical for Russia. The purpose of traveling abroad is to purchase consumer goods for their subsequent sale.

According to V.G. Gulyaev, tourism is a developing industry in Russia, and the influence of the tourism industry on the country’s economy is still insignificant. The underdevelopment of tourism infrastructure, low quality of service, and the persistent myth about Russia as a high-risk country have led to the fact that our country currently accounts for less than 1% of the world tourist flow. The indicator of tourist mobility of the Russian population is one of the lowest in the world. The overwhelming majority of travel agencies prefer to send their compatriots abroad, and only a few companies work to attract tourists to Russia. Moreover, tourists mainly visit Moscow and St. Petersburg. Tourism is a separate industry that does not mobilize foreign exchange earnings to Russia, but, on the contrary, is a channel for the outflow of foreign currency on an impressive scale. Perhaps the avalanche of offers for holidays abroad was in demand by us in Russia, because there they offered us higher quality service at reasonable prices.

The tourism product is formed from the services of enterprises involved in serving people on vacation and travel: transport companies and companies, hotels, restaurants, cafes, excursion companies, museums and exhibition halls, amusement parks, gambling events and establishments, sports and resort organizations.

Tour operators are involved in packaging a tourism product in accordance with the requirements and wishes of clients, that is, creating a set of services called a “tour”.

V.D. Markov believes that when turning to a travel company, the client first of all wants to know what services he is purchasing and how to use them, as well as the guarantees and obligations of the company and his rights. The structure of tourism services distinguishes between basic and additional:

1) Services for organizing transportation

2) Accommodation

3) Food for tourists

Additional services include:

1) Services for organizing excursions

2) Travel insurance services

3) Services of guides, guide-translators

4) Services for transporting a tourist from his place of stay in the country (place of his temporary stay) to the place of accommodation and back (transfer), as well as any other transportation within the country (place of temporary stay) provided for by the conditions of travel

5) Equipment repair services

6) Rental services

7) Currency exchange

8) Telephone

10) Household services

11) Right to use the beach

Thus, a tourism product is a property right to a tour intended for sale to a tourist

Tourist and excursion organizations organize and sell tours. In practice, they can have any name - from a travel agency to an association of tourists and travelers. However, from the point of view of the type of business, they can be divided into travel agencies and tourism operators.

What do these terms mean, what are their main differences and features?

A travel agent sells a tourism product to a client in the form of complexes (inclusive tours) or a free set of services (custom tours).

The tour operator completes tours and creates a range of services for tourists, develops tourist routes, saturates them with services through interaction with service providers, ensures the functioning of tours and the provision of services, prepares advertising and information publications for their tours, calculates tour prices, transfers tours to a travel agent for their subsequent implementation tourists.

A travel agent is an intermediary organization engaged in the sale of tours prepared by a tour operator to the consumer. The travel agent adds to the purchased tour the travel of tourists from their place of residence to the first accommodation point along the route, and from the last accommodation point on the route back.

The main market role of these organizations is to connect service providers with tourist clients. This is a specific type of tourism business. What is important here is the correct choice of service providers, based on professional knowledge of the tourism market, business, features and levers of its development and management.

Main functions of tourism organizations: components; service; warranty

A component function is a package of a tour from individual services - for a receptive tour operator; packaging of combined tours from receptive tours - for an initiative tour operator; compilation of tour packages with transport and some other types of services - for travel agencies.

The service function is servicing tourists on routes and in the office when selling tour packages.

The guarantee function is the provision of guarantees to tourists for prepaid tourist services in a specified quantity and at a specified level. According to the current international and Russian legislation, for the quality of the service provided, the organization that created and sold the package of services to the tourist bears full responsibility, regardless of whether it provides these services itself or a third party (service provider).

Typically, a tour operator is a larger company than a travel agent. It has a head office and several branches - an agent network. Regardless of its own agent network, the tour operator enters into agency agreements with independent travel agencies to sell its tours.

Travel agents and tour operators can have various forms of ownership: private, state, joint stock company, but the essence of business activity and market functions do not change.

A travel agency is a fairly common type of business in tourism. Competition pushes travel companies to find their niche in the tourism industry and forces them to adapt to demand, taking into account differences between individual consumer groups. A significant portion of firms operate as retail travel agencies, working directly with clients.

The main tasks of a travel agency:

Complete and wide coverage of recreation and travel opportunities for all available tours, resorts, tourist centers, etc.

Organization of the sale of a tourism product in accordance with modern trading methods, as well as using the specifics and features of the tourism business.

Travel agencies can take various forms:

Pure travel agencies selling tours organized by tour operators on a commission basis;

Transport and travel agencies for organizing transtours. There are prospects for creating joint ventures with transport organizations: air transit enterprises, airlines, railways. An option for interaction with carriers is also agency agreements for the sale of transport tickets.

From the point of view of the specifics of their activities, travel agencies can be multidisciplinary (the most common), that is, providing comprehensive services to any clients, including vacationers, business travelers, etc., and specialized, the most common of which are commercial travel agencies that organize business trips for large companies, including congress services , as well as specializing in organizing recreation.

By pursuing a certain policy in the field of pricing, a travel company actively influences both the volume of sales and the amount of profit received. As a rule, a travel agency is not guided by immediate benefits, selling tourism products at the highest possible price, but pursues a flexible pricing policy.

In general, there are 4 factors that influence the setting of prices:

1. cost structure (price should be higher than the travel agency’s costs);

2. competitive prices;

3. prices that buyers are willing to pay (elasticity of demand);

4. goals of tourism organizations:

Profit maximization;

Maximizing return on investment;

Survival (seasonal nature of the tourism industry and high level of competition);

Increase in sales .

Price elasticity of demand is of great importance for pricing in tourism. To determine the degree of sensitivity of demand to price changes, an indicator of price elasticity of demand is used, which is defined as the ratio of the percentage change in the quantity of demand to the percentage change in its price.

Due to the price elasticity of demand, prices are one of the key marketing tools in tourism. This happens for the following reasons:

1. Price changes greatly affect sales volume. Typically, a relatively low price will attract additional customers, but an unusually high price can have the same effect in some cases. Consumers perceive more expensive services as being of higher quality, especially if they are unable to verify this.

2. Changing the price, unlike other marketing measures, has the fastest effect.

3. Potential tourists react faster to price changes than to changes in services offered to them.

4. Changing the price in order to attract new customers is effective only in combination with measures to promote the tourism product, aimed at both resellers and potential customers.

The direct subjects of tourism production are the clients of travel companies.

In the process of selling any product, including tourism products, a significant place belongs to the sales method. The sales method should be understood as a set of techniques for carrying out all the main operations associated with the direct sale of tourism products to consumers. The choice of sales method predetermines the level and structure of the technological process of customer service, significantly affects the number of staff of the travel agency, the size of its premises, the degree of availability of communications and information technology, the amount of expenses and other indicators.

An important element of customer service is documenting the relationship. In this case, documents can be divided into three groups:

1. Order documents (order, booking sheet, booking confirmation).

2. Documents for the client (contract, travel package, voucher, memo, insurance policy, transport ticket).

3. Documents confirming the identity of the tourist (passport, power of attorney for children, etc.)

O.I. Kostyukova believes that when filling out a reservation sheet, or as it is also called, an application for a tour, the client pays part of the cost of the tour to confirm his intentions. Depending on whether this amount is called an advance or a deposit in the document, the application may have a different legal status. Thus, if the preliminary payment is recognized as an advance payment, then the completed application (or booking sheet) is recognized as a preliminary agreement, under which the parties subsequently undertake to conclude the main agreement on the terms stipulated by the preliminary one. Therefore, after completing the application, the main contract must be executed, and the preliminary one may be deprived of legal force or, by agreement between the parties, included in the main one as an integral part with the subsequent issuance of the voucher. If the advance payment is recognized as a deposit, then the presence of a deposit indicates the conclusion of a transaction agreement, as a result of which another agreement is not required. Options for filling out an application-booking sheet are appropriate, first of all, for travel agencies that implement tours of tour operators and do not have complete information about the capabilities of the latter to immediately provide the client with the required service, as well as when developing individual tours. If the service is provided directly by a tour operator, then drawing up a preliminary agreement in the form of an application is inappropriate.

Thus, specialized travel agencies, which can be divided into travel agents and tour operators, are engaged in ensuring the quality of the tourism product. Prices for a tourism product should be elastic and formed not only due to costs and planned profits, but also due to the opinions of clients. The subjects of tourism production are clients. The relationship between them and travel companies can be regulated by various documents, forms of contact, etc.

It is advisable to schedule a number of such reviews before the campaign starts, during the campaign, and after the campaign ends. 3. MARKETING PLAN FOR A SMALL TRAVEL COMPANY IN KHABAROVSK, USING THE EXAMPLE OF AKFA-SERVICE LLC 3.1. Analysis of the current marketing situation. According to the administration of the Khabarovsk Territory (tourism department of the Committee on Economics), as of May 1, 2000, the number of travel agencies operating in Khabarovsk exceeded 120. ...

Tourism and write as much as possible about it to attract it. Perhaps foreign consumers, etc. We must focus on external manufacturers and learn from them. 2.3 Promotion of travel services by Holiday Service on the Internet Advertising, like any other type of marketing communications, plays an important role in the implementation of the strategy of a travel company. It provides socio-cultural...

Tourism marketing is a set of methods and techniques for collecting and analyzing data aimed at identifying opportunities to meet people's needs from the point of view of psychological, economic and social factors, as well as solving problems of rational management of a tourism organization.

The purpose of marketing is to recognize, identify and evaluate existing or latent demand for goods and services that an enterprise offers or can offer, and to direct the firm's efforts to develop, produce, distribute, sell and promote these goods and services.

The goal of tour marketing is profit-generating work to serve and satisfy customer needs. As the vice president of the famous Sheraton hotel chain said, our goal is profitable work to serve and satisfy customer needs. From this point of view, marketing should serve a clearly defined purpose: how to function most successfully.

The object of any marketing is the behavior of an enterprise in relation to its market and consumers. The central idea of ​​marketing in this case is a market orientation position instead of a product orientation position.

Depending on the legal status and the corresponding legal form of a particular tourism enterprise, on the specifics of the activity and the state of the tourism services market, on the availability and volume of government assistance, on the mentality of the entrepreneurs themselves, the marketing goals of the tourism enterprise are divided into:

• 1) Economic: formed through certain digital indicators of activity or through percentages (maximizing profits in the future, identifying new market segments, improving the sales of tourism products, strengthening market positions, etc.).
• 2) ""Egoistic"": increasing the prestige and improving the image of a company, country, region or specific area. This may be a desire to maintain independence, increase business stability, etc.
• 3) Social: considered from the point of view of developing a tour product that can be used by people with lower incomes. They can also be expressed in the development of tourism products that help protect the environment, reduce unemployment, and stimulate the expansion of small businesses.

The tourism industry is characterized by a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises that have neither the know-how nor the experience necessary to correctly apply modern marketing techniques. They also do not have enough profit to hire the required number of people and pay the necessary marketing costs. They make only haphazard attempts at advertising, promotion and market research.

Achieving success requires significant effort, creativity, and resourcefulness. First of all, it is necessary to develop an appropriate strategy for promoting your tour product. Such promotion can be carried out in various ways, both external and internal to the company concerned.

Developing a marketing strategy at different levels will ultimately determine the national program for the development of domestic tourism. Currently, nothing like this has been developed at the national level, but even the majority of tour companies that have worked for a considerable time in this business use only groups of methods and means of marketing activities.

The tourism product, due to its consumption by individuals, must be brought to the individual personally. At the same time, the tour operator is forced to resort to the help of thousands of travel agencies, which directly or indirectly through family agents or agents working in enterprises, bring information about this product to potential consumers. At the same time, in conditions of price competition in the region for a specific type of product with uniform characteristics, price indicators are leveled out, since at the stage of tour consumption the potential client has a clear tendency to minimize costs. Here we should study the problem of tourism demand in more detail.

Tourist services in international trade act as an “invisible” product. A characteristic feature and unique advantage of tourism services as a product is that a significant part of these services is produced at minimal cost locally and, as a rule, without the use of foreign currency. Foreign tourists use the tourism industry of the destination country. In addition, they consume or buy and export as souvenirs a certain amount of goods purchased in the visiting country for foreign currency, having previously exchanged it for local currency.

International tourism as one of the forms of international economic relations has acquired enormous proportions in modern conditions and has begun to have a significant impact on political, economic and cultural ties between countries. In addition, in many countries, income from tourism activities constitutes a significant part of national income (Spain, Cyprus, Malta, Australia, etc.).

According to experts, the rapid development of international tourism will continue. If current growth rates are maintained, the number of international travel will reach 900 million people by 2005, and by 2010 it will increase and amount to about 937 million people. According to the latest WTO forecasts, by 2020, 1.6 billion people will travel annually, and the growth rate will be 4.3% in the number of tourists, and 6.4% in tourism income. In Table 1 you can see how quickly outbound tourism in Russia is developing, and in Diagram 3 you can see the structure of trips to Russia by foreign citizens.

International tourism is now one of the three largest export industries, behind oil and automobile manufacturing.

The development of tourism is becoming more visible and tangible. Therefore, studying its condition and problems is very important, especially because tourism can have a significant impact on the country's economy. The importance of tourism in the world is constantly increasing, which is associated with the increased influence of tourism on the economy of an individual country.

The tourism industry is a complex organization for the production of a tourism product. The tourism industry usually includes tourism resources and enterprises (organizations, institutions, individuals, etc.) offering services to tourists.

The implementation of a tourism business in market conditions can be carried out in the presence of four main components:

• * capital;
• * technologies;
• * frames;
• * tourist resources.

This means that, without enough capital, buy technology, hire a staff team and engage in tourism. To do this, it is necessary to choose a place where there are tourist and recreational resources, and if there is no such place, then create it. This is one of the specific features of the tourism business in market conditions. If tourism is associated with the creation of a tourism resource (and not the consumption of an existing one), then the cost of the tourism product increases sharply.

Tourist resources are understood as a set of natural and man-made objects suitable for creating a tourism product. As a rule, tourism resources determine the formation of tourism business in a particular region.

According to the definition of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), a tourist is a citizen visiting a country (place) of temporary stay for health, educational, professional, business, sports, religious and other purposes without engaging in paid activities for a period from 24 hours to 6 months in a row or carrying out at least one overnight stay. His relationship with a travel company consists of the acquisition of a tourist voucher - a document confirming the fact of the transfer of a tourist product - the right to a tour intended to be transferred to a tourist, and a tour is a set of services for accommodation, transportation, meals for tourists, excursion services, as well as services of guide-translators and other services provided depending on the purpose of the trip.

The work of travel agencies with tourists includes:

• - offering a tourist or a group of tourists a certain set of tourist and excursion services;
• - receiving money from the client for a trip (tour),
• - transfer of funds to relevant organizations for accommodation, accommodation, excursion services.

The contractual relationship between a tourist and a travel company is formed as a relationship between a buyer (customer) and a seller (performer). At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize the special nature of the “product” purchased from a travel company. By entering into a contractual relationship, the tourist expects to ultimately receive the set of services he needs. The company provides him, as a rule, not with the services themselves, but with the rights (guarantees) to receive, at a certain time, in a certain place, services directly provided by other companies that do not have direct contractual relations with this tourist, but are in contractual relations with the guiding tourist by the company. The tourist also acquires guarantees for the provision of certain types of services by the sending company itself. The totality of these rights is reflected in the voucher, which is the final “product” of the activities of the travel company and, accordingly, the subject of its implementation and depends on the type of activity it is engaged in.

Tour operator activities are activities for the formation, promotion and sale of a tourism product, carried out on the basis of a license by a legal entity or individual entrepreneur (tour operator).

Travel agency activity is an activity for the promotion and sale of a tourism product, carried out on the basis of a license by a legal entity and an individual entrepreneur (travel agent).

The relationship between a tour operator and a tourist is most often built on the basis of an agency agreement on the former granting the latter the right to sell the tourism product generated by the tour operator.

Relations with a foreign partner are based on the sharing of services provided. The foreign company provides accommodation, meals, excursion services, and sometimes insurance. Russian company - transportation of tourists, insurance and visa processing. The advertising campaign is carried out by a Russian company using only its own funds, without the help of a partner.

Such business cooperation can be considered the most convenient. A foreign company, having constant connections with hotels and better understanding the market situation, can reduce costs and provide discounts, which enable the Russian company to offer competitive services at a cost lower than the costs of an independently traveling tourist, which ensures constant demand.

The widespread use of Internet technologies is becoming one of the most pressing tasks in the tourism industry. The creation of powerful computer systems for booking accommodation and transport, excursion and cultural and recreational services, information about the availability and accessibility of certain tours, routes, the tourism potential of countries and regions - the whole range of these issues becomes relevant for organizing the current and future activities of tourism enterprises.

Many travel companies see the widespread use of the Internet as a threat to their business. The opening of online booking systems for hotels, air tickets and other components of the tour will allow clients to independently organize their vacation without resorting to the services of agencies. Already, many Internet users can independently not only view and select from their home computers, but also book all segments of a tour (hotels, air tickets, cars, excursions, transfers). In this case, there may simply be no need to visit agencies and view catalogs.

The rapid development of the Internet is gradually changing the attitude of travel companies to advertising. For example, some agencies began to reduce the volume of published newspaper advertising, giving preference to posting their information online. Instead of large advertisements in newspapers, small blocks indicating the address of the agency's information page on the Internet are increasingly found.

The Internet makes it possible to conduct massive advertising campaigns at minimal cost. If you publish commercial information in a popular electronic publication, it will become available to millions of people around the world not for one day, but for a month, a quarter, a year. For relatively little money, you can post on the Internet the most extensive information about a company, its products and services, conditions for working with clients, etc.

To solve existing problems and unite workers and users of information technologies in tourism, the Association for the Promotion of Tourism Technologies (ASTT) was created, which includes a number of companies carrying out certain types of activities: “Alean” (the “Alean” reservation system); "Arim-Soft" (tourist portal "100 roads"); "Megatek" (automation system "Mvster-Tour"); "Samo-Soft" (automation system "Samo-Tour"); UTS (hotel and service booking system).

The main goal of ASTT is to prepare tourism market participants for the introduction and effective use of modern means of doing business. The association holds conferences and seminars aimed at improving professional skills, advises business executives, researches the tourism market and informs companies about its development trends, develops and implements software standards.

The tourism industry has changed significantly in recent years due to the development and expansion of the use of computer technology. The distinctive features of the tourism product require the rapid provision of the necessary information about the availability of available places in accommodation and transport enterprises, as well as their reservation and booking. This is quite feasible provided that modern computer technologies for processing and transmitting information are widely used.

The main function of the Internet is the provision and transmission of information, which helps companies obtain useful information, compare, analyze, and make effective decisions. But the Internet is capable of more than just transmitting information. Thanks to graphic capabilities, companies can obtain visual material (photos of hotels, rooms, means of transport, tourist spots and objects), which are widely used to attract customers. The Internet also offers widely available search capabilities (allowing you to specify specific search parameters) that help the client evaluate and compare the cost parameters of offers, save information of interest, etc.

For tourism organizations, the timeliness and accuracy of operational information received and sent is crucial, which is why e-mail (the most popular Internet service) has become widespread. It is usually used to exchange text, graphic and other information with partners and clients. This service allows you to reduce telephone communication costs several times and ensure high speed information delivery. The average delivery time for a message, regardless of the location of the recipient, is usually several minutes.

In Russia, absolutely all travel companies use email to varying degrees. It is used to communicate with partners and clients, transmit and receive information, documents, applications, brochures, booklets. Along with this, online communication programs, for example ICQ, Miranda, Odigo1, are becoming increasingly popular. This type of communication allows you to communicate with partners and clients in real time, as well as exchange attached files.

Using the Internet for hotels can lead to significant reductions in booking costs. Reservation systems have begun to actively develop in the Russian market in recent years. Analysts predict that in the near future, users will increasingly turn to those sites that offer comprehensive travel booking options. Today we can talk about the advantages of large specialized travel sites.

Russian travel companies quickly got their bearings and understood all the benefits of using the Internet. Many large tour operator companies have already created virtual stores where you can not only buy a trip for sale, but also make a pre-order, as well as independently compose a tour from the offers available in the store. Such companies include Natali-Tour, Neva, GreenEx, Flagman, Lemek, TRAVELONE. Travel portals, unlike magazines, are not limited by advertising modules and can always offer something original to advertise the offers of travel companies. For example, if it is necessary to inform Internet users about the offer of a travel company as widely as possible, then it is possible to simultaneously place an advertising block on several leading travel sites: Turizm.ru, 100 Roads, Travel.ru, etc.

With the development of Java and Flash technologies, companies began to use mini-presentations of special offers to stimulate sales. These technologies help to combine not only colorful images and text, but also use dynamic objects to attract visitors. The use of online games is noted as a method of sales promotion. A similar game is a “walking tour” of countries, cities, tourist sites with the opportunity to get acquainted in detail with the place of travel, tourist sites, read information about the country, its laws, culture and traditions, learn more about the attractions, and also plan your own optimal travel route. However, creating these virtual “guides” is an expensive way to attract visitors and is used very rarely and only by those companies that can afford it.

The most common way to express yourself on the Internet is to create, maintain and advertise your own Internet project, namely a Web site or Web page. Approximately every tenth Russian travel company already has its own websites.

For example, for a tour operator company, it would be logical to post information that is of interest to its agents: charter schedules and its changes, loading of flights and hotels, standard documents necessary for registering a client as an agent, the procedure for mutual settlements, addresses and telephone numbers of agents, etc. In order for the server to be of interest to a wider audience, it is necessary to place on it publicly available and useful information about countries, hotels, and useful travel tips. Then potential clients who visited it once will want to come back again or recommend others to watch it. Thus, the company will be able to find new clients or even partners.

If the company is a travel agency, then the approach to choosing content should be especially careful. The client is primarily interested in the price and service provided by the company. Maximum accuracy and detail is required here: is there a beach at the hotel, how much does it cost to rent a car, what plane the client will fly on. Positive reviews are generated by the detailed tour programs. After all, a person who has visited the server will ask much fewer questions when he comes to the office, and he will be able to find out a lot on his own.

Moscow tour operators are highly active, forming an agent network through their pages, promoting tourism products to the regions.

Considerable amounts of money are spent on creating websites for travel companies, but the owners of no more than 10-15% of websites have a real return. This is explained primarily by the quality of the Internet pages, their maintenance, and the range of services provided. The greatest interest and high traffic are those sites that provide not only information about the company and the tourism products offered, but also provide electronic booking and sale of tours. The cost of website development often depends on its structure, the information posted, the region and other factors. Thus, in the central regions of Russia, the cost of development can range from 3000 to 5000 dollars, in the periphery - from 1000 to 2000 dollars1.

Currently, with the increase in Internet users, an increasing number of tour operators and travel agents are paying attention to the development of online representations, recognizing this direction as promising and even necessary. Here you should pay attention to the quality, reliability and timeliness of information, the availability of coordinates, the ability to make an application and leave feedback.

Developing ways to improve the use of Internet technologies in the field of tourism is of undoubted interest both for individual tourism enterprises and for the Russian tourism industry as a whole, helping to increase the attractiveness of tourism.

The most complete collection of travel sites is, of course, the “Around the World” section of the “Mail.Ru” catalog (www.mail.ru). It contains links to more than 4,000 pages dedicated to tourism, travel, countries, resorts, travel companies, and they are grouped into several dozen subcategories, which sometimes makes it much easier to find the right resource.

However, the most visited by potential tourists is the “Travel” section of the Rambler rating classifier (www.rambler.ru). Here all pages are sorted in order of popularity, i.e. The more people have looked at a particular page on the site today, the higher it is in the ranking, and the easier it is to find it.

The catalogs www.ru, www.weblist.ru also deserve mention - they contain a large number of links on tourism. However, in terms of ease of search, classifier and amount of information, they are significantly inferior to Mail.Ru.

In addition to catalogues, tourist sections are found on entertainment websites, mega-portals, for example on www.gala.net, www. estaFt.ru, www.emax.ru. However, the information presented in such sections is significantly inferior in volume and quality to specialized travel sites. The exception is the tourism section of the mega-portal “Cyril and Methodius” (www.km.ru/tourism), which can confidently be classified as a specialized tourism portal.

Travel portals can be considered as online advertising platforms designed to promote sales of services of advertisers - tour operators and travel agencies. The source of income for portals can be either banner advertising and paid placement of information about travel companies and their offers, as well as commissions received from the company for the fact of ordering from the server.

On the portals you can book a tour through a specially designed form (feedback) or order information about a suitable offer by email. Typically, such offers appear in the form of lines indicating the selling company, resort, hotel category, type of transport, additional services on the tour, minimum or maximum price, etc. It is noteworthy that an employee of a travel company can enter and change his tours in real time. Some resources offer a mechanism for ordering a tour online, the ability to insert price lists or tour programs, write detailed comments, etc. Moreover, advertisers in this case do not have to have their own page on the Internet, but simply indicate their e-mail or phone number.

Conferences (forums) on websites are no less successful. In them, any network user can express his opinion about the work of a particular company, advise others where it is better to relax, ask the audience how best to act in a given situation when choosing a tour, resort, travel company, etc.

The server www.travel.ru has existed since 1997 and contains a database of travel agencies in Russia and other countries, as well as numerous offers of a wide variety of tours. In July 1999, the “Traveller's Archive” was added to the server - a large Russian-language library with information about countries, their culture and history, travel stories and much more. The Archive contains more than 5 thousand articles from 199 countries. The “100 Roads” server (www.tours.ru) was created by Arim-Soft and has existed since 1996. The first version of the site was demonstrated at the spring tourism exhibition Mitt-96, and since then it has been participating in all major tourism events. The regular audience is represented mainly by travel agencies that visit the server at least once a week. This server is the most informative, as it contains a database of travel agencies in more than 150 countries, 100 thousand objects on all continents, provides the opportunity to get advice regarding the legal aspects of tourism, etc. The server has a last-minute travel packages section. Descriptions of more than 2 thousand hotels are presented.

The “100 Roads” server is one of the 60 most famous sites on the Russian Internet. It was recognized as the most investment-attractive project out of more than 100 Russian participating sites and was awarded the “Leaders of the Russian Tourism Business - 2001” award in the category “Best Site of the Year in the Field of Tourism.”

The Travel Catalog server (www.turizm.ru) was developed by the Internet Marketing Bureau in February 1998 and is also one of the most popular and frequently visited travel portals.

The server www.votpusk.ru (formerly www.mayakinfo.ru) contains information about countries, companies, as well as offers from leading travel agencies in Russia and abroad; Information is also provided here about organizations involved in issuing visas and foreign passports, selling and booking air and railway tickets. This server also offers advertising services. Distinctive features of the system are: ease of maintenance and editing; completeness of information presentation (posting an unlimited amount of detailed information about the advertiser’s programs - descriptions of excursions, hotels, photographs, price tables, etc.); individual approach, control of effectiveness throughout the entire period of advertising placement and a moderate, flexible pricing policy.

“Tourist Guide” (www.turgid.ru) is a specialized information search catalog with daily updated news and events. It presents offers from leading travel agencies, provides the ability to book tour packages via the Internet, and contains information on obtaining visas, foreign passports, insurance, studying abroad, etc.

“The last minute travel store” (www.tournews.ru) contains information about last minute tours and the companies that sell them, as well as extensive background information about countries and resorts, descriptions of hotels, tourist news, etc. The sections “Law in Tourism” are presented here ", "Offshores", FAQ, "Order a tour", "Tourist SNAT", "Tips from experienced people", etc.

The website “All Hotels in Russia” (www.all-hotels.ru) provides information on hotels in Russia and abroad. After registering and receiving a password, it is possible to book hotel rooms either by e-mail or by fax with confirmation by e-mail. For travel agencies, upon request, a suitable accommodation option with additional discounts is selected within 24 hours.

The “Red Phone” tourism reference service (www.redphone.ru) contains information about travel companies, descriptions of tours, a list of organizations offering services for obtaining visas, international passports and purchasing air tickets, as well as information on countries, cities and resorts.

The vast majority of Russian tour operators are represented online to one degree or another. The main groups of tour operator sites are: business card, \L/eb-showcase and the “Tour operator - travel agent” system.

If you try to classify travel agency sites, the hierarchy will be similar to tour operator sites: business card, web-showcase and travel electronic store.

The main feature of the travel electronic store is a detailed description of each tour, hotel, for a specific date with the corresponding prices, and offers the opportunity to order a specific travel package. Providing such a volume of information is impossible without using an online database of tours. The undeveloped system of Internet payments does not yet allow today to make tour purchases via the Internet, but deciding on a tour, a specific hotel, and making a reservation is quite possible.

Speaking about the Russian information technology market, it is important to note that today it is at the stage when most travel companies are ready to provide all the information the client needs online, but the Russian consumer is not prepared to use Internet technologies for their own purposes. The exception is the central regions of Russia, where the share of potentially solvent Internet users is about 70%’.

Several areas for improving methods of using the Internet in tourism activities are identified.

Internet marketing involves the implementation of a company's marketing policy via the Internet. One of these tools is the company's website. However, not all existing sites cover the costs of their creation. In most cases, this happens due to the lack of any strategy for developing and maintaining the site.

The visual design of the site should be as effective as possible. At the design development stage, important tasks are to evaluate the visual design of the user interface as the “face” of the organization on the Internet, the appropriateness of the chosen concept and the role of visual perception. The design must correspond to the potential audience of the company, be it wealthy business owners, specialists, employees of small firms, or students. Many companies resort to the latest technologies and developments in the field of design and programming. However, do not forget that the visual design of the site is primarily the user interface. From this point of view, the design should be convenient and understandable, help the visitor quickly navigate the site and accurately find the necessary information.

One of the important weapons of competition is the quality of information. Tourists will choose host centers primarily based on the information received. The strategy should be aimed at organizing such a search mechanism so that the client has the opportunity to independently choose the route and plan the trip. Publishing online brochures with descriptions of popular routes can serve the purpose of stimulating the client to buy a particular tour.

The website should be: readable by 99% of the audience; attractive to 95% of the audience; impress 80% of the audience; surprise 30% of the audience43.

The next stage in improving the use of Internet technologies is to conduct an advertising campaign on a website and network aimed at the potential audience of a travel company. Website promotion and advertising on the Internet is carried out through mailing lists, search engines, banner and text advertising, ratings, link exchange, news services, support for content projects and PR.

When developing ways to use Internet technologies, namely a website, do not forget that after its creation it is necessary to maintain and, if possible, update this resource. If a company intends to actually use the Internet as a marketing tool, then it must engage in it, prepare new ones and analyze the relevance of existing materials, as well as control the interest factor. The most unsuccessful projects are those sites that have frozen in their development at, for example, a year ago. An unprofessional, unattractive and uninformative website will create a corresponding impression about the company. This fate must be avoided. If there are no specialists on staff, then you should resort to the services of professionals. At the stage of developing a strategy for using online resources, the company must calculate the possibilities of maintaining the site. If this turns out to be costly for the company, then in order to avoid negative consequences, it is unlikely that it should pursue marketing policies on the Internet.

To improve the use of online technologies, the following points need to be considered44.

Firstly, it is best to leave the creation of a website to a professional website studio or advertising agency involved in this area, since creating a modern website requires the efforts of not only managers and marketers, but also programmers, designers, and other specialists. The increase in the level of website of travel companies shows that many managers have already realized the need for this. It’s even better if the studio that the company trusts to create the website has experience in implementing tourism projects. Then the developers of the company’s website will find a common language with the customer, and they will not have to waste time explaining the basics and specifics of the tourism business.

Secondly, it is necessary to organize an Internet project based on the direction of the company’s activities. A travel agency website, as a rule, has completely different tasks. On a travel agency’s website, it is important not only to post up-to-date information, but also to present it in such a way that the client chooses it from the variety of websites. When turning to the Internet in search of a trip, the client expects something more than just lines from “Tourism and Recreation” presented in electronic form. Such lines are good on travel portals, which are the starting point in searching for a tour. By moving from the travel portal to the travel agency website, the client has the right to receive more detailed and up-to-date information. There is no point in overwhelming the client with a large amount of regional information. The client can also obtain this data from other sites. On the travel agency page, first of all, information about specific offers is needed.

Thirdly, on the path to proper website development, it is necessary to avoid excessive enthusiasm for rich graphics, sound effects, i-applets and animation. The company's website is a marketing tool, and not a means for experimenting with \L/e-technologies. There is no need to use a corporate website to demonstrate features, which sometimes take a lot of time to download. Today, more and more travel companies are using the Internet in their daily activities. However, the Internet is not yet taken seriously as a source of attracting customers, although there are travel agencies that can say that their advertising on the Internet works, and works well.

The Internet allows tourism enterprises to join new technologies, opens up new forms of working with clients, provides the opportunity for constant interaction with their business partners, as well as access to a variety of information sources.

Developing ways to improve the use of Internet technologies in the field of tourism is of undoubted interest not only for individual tourism enterprises, but can generally affect the development of the tourism industry in Russia.